Excise Australia Fair

There has been a poor reception for verse written in praise of special economic zones by Gina Rinehart, mining magnate, sponsor of Ian Plimer and Australia's richest woman. The topic deserves better and so we offer our update of Advance Australia Fair.

In special economic zones
Australians can be free
As long as they're the one that owns
And not an employee.
The land abounds in nature's gifts
That we don't wish to share.
As we advance, at every chance:
Excise Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing
"Excise Australia fair".

When Dampier from Albion sailed,
For piracy and more
As British courage bore him on,
He reached our western shore.
He left us with a legacy
As taught in English schools.
With all their faults, there's one we love:
"Britannia waives the rules".
In pirates' strains then let us sing
"Excise Australia fair!"

Our forebears formed the IPA
To rail against the laws
That slow the rate that riches flow
Into our gaping maws.
But working piecemeal takes too long
To sweep them all away.
Declare that in your business place
Such laws do not hold sway.
In lawyers' strains then let us sing
"Excise Australia fair!"

It works with imigration zones
That redefine the lands
And leaves this Commonwealth of ours
Divided into bands.
For those who've come across the seas
To reach Australian shores
They find they're in Australia
But outside Australian laws.
In racist strains then let us sing,
"Excise Australia fair".

If foreign workers reach our coast,
With skills to lend a hand,
We'll seek the right to pay them less
Than natives of our land.
The markets then shall surely know,
Beyond wide ocean's roll,
That here in west Australia's land
We keep a pirate's soul.
In richer strains the let us sing
"Excise Australia fair!"

Of course Advance Australia Fair has itself been subject to excision, with two verses being extracted to become the Australian National anthem. There may yet be need for further excision in the verse containing.

For those who've come across the sea
we've boundless plains share.(Formerly "boundless plains share" actually meant Baxter detention centre on the plains north of Port Augusta, but with re-opening of off-shore processing of claims for asylum, even this "figleaf" is disappearing.)

Britain has done the same sort of excision of God Save the Monarch to create the national anthem. However it is rumoured that Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, of the UK independence party is lobbying for reinstatement, reflecting his party's European policy, of the verse:

O Lord our God arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all.

Moritz Lorenz.
Sarah Palin School of Geography, Economics and Quantum Computing,
University of Narbethong,
West Island Campus, NZ